


Serum

by chromaticality



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Brainwashing, Captured, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lance whump, do fandoms even use the term whump anymore, mostly just hurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7384357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromaticality/pseuds/chromaticality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a diplomatic mission gone wrong, Lance gets left behind.</p><p>Lots of suffering and snark.<br/>Fully written, will be posting the remaining chapters over the next couple days.</p><p>Edit: I lied. Decided to rewrite the ending a bit. Working on it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In better times, Allura told them, Voltron pilots were primarily politicians. 

“Or diplomats, if you prefer,” she’d said archly when Lance gagged dramatically. “These may not be better times, but we mustn’t forget the power of those who owe us their freedoms. Even Voltron can’t be everywhere at once.

So they’d each gotten a crash course in diplomacy, which had been hilarious in and of itself. The simulation’s high score for ‘killed by offended civilians’ went to Keith, until he learned to walk the fine line between ‘confident and serious’ and ‘outright asshole’. 

Shiro, of course, took to it like a duck to water. Everyone likes Shiro.

Pidge and Hunk were affable and persuasive enough, but they both had some confidence issues. That sort of thing was blood in the water for more intense politicians. Still, they were perfectly fine with ‘cuddly and amenable’ types, as Coran put it. Pidge even had an advantage--short species tended to like her a great deal, to her dismay. Hunk, to his credit, was pretty good at memorizing cultural customs on the fly. After all, he was the first of them to make any real diplomatic contact, with Shay and her people.

But to everyone’s surprise, the real dark horse was Lance. Shiro was good, but Lance was a grade-A schmoozer. He could talk water from a stone and, more importantly, money from a wallet. The castle had held up well over 10,000 years, but even it needed replacement parts sometimes. Also, man could not live on nutritional goop alone and occasionally needed a space pizza, for morale purposes. Hunk was very firm on this point.

In any case, they all fell naturally into various diplomatic types. Hunk and Pidge got the quiet, scared planets--of which there were quite a few, after so long under Galra rule. Keith and Shiro typically took the strategic planets with fighting capabilities--those that could help here and there with guerilla warfare tactics. Lance got the rich folks. 

One such rich folk sat in front of him now, using a green tendril to push a plate of what Lance presumed was food closer to him. The guy looked a bit like a starfish with long prehensile seaweed hair. Not a particularly attractive lot, but Lance had dutifully flirted with his...daughter? Hard to tell, but she/he had lovely seaweed and seemed flattered, so that worked out. 

Richie Rich had much less lovely seaweed and smelled unpleasantly like pond algae. His real name, of course, was something a great deal longer and not made for the human tongue. Altean tech did a great job with auto-translation but even it had its limits. Pidge had said she was working on it, but she’d also laughed and rolled her eyes. He took that to mean she was absolutely not working on it, no way, no how. 

“Thank you, sir,” Lance obligingly scooped up some of the whatever-it-was onto his plate. “As I was saying, we’re in pretty big need of shielding devices. Most of the freed planets don’t have them. I think the ratio would be roughly all of them, actually. I could get Coram to draw up a graph, probably. A pie chart, all in one color. Except for the eensy-weensy sliver that is your planet.”

“Yes,” agreed Richie Rich, “I can see how that would be a issue for you.” 

Which was politician for ‘not my problem, strange alien’. It felt like they were both working from a script. The next, natural line was, “So surely you can spare a handful or hundred to the war effort.” To which the response should be: “fuck off, they’re expensive.” Followed by concessions and future trade agreement promises and, finally, a deal.

It was a perfectly good script, so Lance was quite disgruntled when it got cut off just a few words in with a sharp blow to the back of his head. Richie Rich’s face disappeared in a burst of stars.

  
-  
  
  


Lance woke up to the disgusting evidence that this was not the first time he’d woken up. Damn, definitely had a concussion then. At least he’d had the presence of mind not to throw up on himself. 

His head was pounding, but a shaky hand pressed against it didn’t come back red, so that was good. Less good was the way the room kept swimming. He raised a particularly rude finger against, y‘know, the situation in general--yep, looked like two fingers. Just peachy.

The smell of his own vomit was kinda threatening a second showing, so he rolled away from it a bit. “Okay,” he told the floor under his face firmly. “Thirty seconds to buck the hell up, then I have to get moving.”.

Thirty seconds was not enough, but he was no promise-breaker. Still, it didn’t work out so well the first attempt, so he rolled over to a wall and used it to lever himself up. Things spun alarmingly and he had to force down the nausea with a chant of, “I am not Hunk, I am not Hunk.” 

The room around him was small and bare, three walls of unbroken grey concrete and a fourth with a small patch of tell-tale blue shimmer. One of the force fields he’d hoped to acquire, that rivaled even Altean shields. Which meant he had about the same chance of getting through it as a very determined moth. 

He took the effort to walk the perimeter of the room, leaning against the wall since his balance was shot to hell. Nothing he could take advantage of--no chinks in the wall, no convenient interior panels connecting to the shield. He supposed that would have been too simple.

Well, fair was fair. His blue lion was currently hunkered down under it’s own shield back on the landing site, and the starfish definitely weren’t getting through that. Starfishes. Whatever.

They’d taken his suit, too, which was just mean. Sure, it let him summon his bayard but  _ they _ didn’t know that. They thought his only weapon was Voltron, so this was them being dicks. At least they’d left him the soft layer of black clothing they all wore underneath, which definitely looked nothing like long underwear thank you very much Pidge. Yes, I know Keith and Shiro pull it off better than I do, shut up.

Focus, focus. Nothing to do from this side of the door, so he’d better let them know he was awake and ready for...What? Hostage negotiations with the hostage? The castle was in orbit and the others would come in guns blazing if he missed a check-in, which had to be soon if the time hadn’t passed already. Starfish shields were good, but Alura had upgraded the cannons recently. He wasn’t quite sure what game they thought they were playing.

Lance made his way to the front of the room and, with a sense of deja vu, knocked on the forcefield. 

Blue energy burst outward and he shouted as it flung him away, narrowly avoiding another blow to the head. His hand burned terribly and he closed his eyes for a few seconds, afraid to look at it.

But when he opened his eyes, there was no skin torn away, no burns, nothing. Every nerve he had was firing pain signals but it didn’t look like there was actual damage, and it felt like it was fading already. So hey, that went worse than he expected but not as badly as it could have. Chalk that up as a kinda-sorta win. 

No time to celebrate, though, because the sound of footsteps was echoing through his little cell and he’d prefer not to greet them from the floor. Lance managed to pull himself up again in time to see the field go down. 

He suddenly knew exactly what game they were playing. Even with his blurry vision, it was pretty easy to tell the difference between a starfish and a Galra soldier. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Ohh,” Lance said knowingly, resisting the urge to back away as the forcefield sprang back up behind the soldier. “Richie Rich is trying to play the big leagues. Sell out a pilot and his lion for special treatment from Zarkon.”

The soldier looked fancy. Fancy helmet, fancy shoulder pads. Maybe about half-again his own size. Another general, maybe? “So hey, guy, you got a name?”

The look he was given made him feel a bit like a bug about to be squished, wow. Guy probably practiced that look in the mirror each morning. A year ago that look would have been a bit scary, but they’d faced down a lot of arrogant Galra. Never had to do it with no weapons at all and no backup, though.

Galra guy said in a voice like a rolling boulder, “Commander Mogor, direct advisor to Prince Lotor. Blue Pilot, I advise you to sit before you fall down.”

Lance blinked. Blinked again. What was with people leaving behind scripts today? “Uh, no, I’m good.” He was definitely not good, so he leaned against the wall as surreptitiously as he could. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. Crossing them screams ‘I feel vulnerable!’ But leaving them at his sides felt too open and dangerous. He supposed he could throw up dukes like a moron, but hell, they both knew the score. He crossed his arms.

Get the conversation back on track. “There definitely weren’t any Galra on the planet when I came down. But you’re in here talking to me instead of Shiro or Alura, so you didn’t capture the palace. Which means…”

“Your comrades managed to escape for now, yes.” Mogor was kind of a weird general. Super calm, not much going on in the way of body language outside of the arrogant you-are-a-bug feel. Not the typical Galra style.

“You know they’ll be back, right?”

“Yes, that’s the idea.”

He laughed. “Please tell me there’s more to the plan. My team is gonna laugh at me if I got captured by an--” idiot, he was about to say, but that seemed unwise, “--A someone without a good plan.”

“Of course. The plan is to turn you, use you, and then kill you and your friends.”

Huh. Well, that wasn’t one Lance had heard before. He made a ‘go-on’ motion with his hands, and Mogor agreeably expounded. “Lord Zarkon’s pet witch has provided us with a serum. I’m told it’s slow, but thorough. It alters your memories until you believe you are one of us, have always been one of us.”

He could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “You will tell us how to open the lion, and we will implant a virus into its systems. We will allow your team to rescue you and form Voltron--and the virus will spread to all the lions, then shut them down. We will remove the pilots and kill them, then deliver Voltron to Lord Zarkon.

Okay, that was...a pretty good plan. “Why not just use the serum to make all of us pilot the lions for you?”

“The serum is, unfortunately, temporary. Any further questions?”

He thought for a moment, tapping a thumb where it rested in the crook of his arm. “Hm. And why tell me all of this?”

Mogor clicked open a holster at his waist and withdrew a white injector gun. “Testing of the serum revealed subjects accept new memories more easily if they were suggested prior to injection.” He clicked a button and the device hummed in a way that set Lance’s teeth on edge.

Time to do something. Forcefield was up so running was out. No way in hell could he beat Mogor hand-to-hand, especially not with a concussion. But Mogor wasn’t the real threat, the serum was. Maybe he could break the injector? Had to try, anyway. 

Looked like plan ‘dukes up like a moron’ was good to go after all. 

Mogor was still fiddling with the injector when Lance lunged for him, using the wall at his back to propel himself forward. Quick movement set the room spinning again but he ignored it, throwing a high punch at the Galra’s face. 

A big purple arm moved to intercept him but Lance was already feinting, pulling back, swinging out a foot to slam into the other hand, clumsy with nausea but--success, the injector went clattering away into a corner. 

He dove toward it. It didn’t look particularly sturdy, if he could just stomp on it once or twice--but a thick fist slammed into his side just before he could reach it, knocking him breathless into the wall before falling to the floor.. Fuck, Mogor was faster than he looked. No time to catch your breath, up up up--

But pain bloomed sharply in his side when he tried to stand, and his arms gave out. He bit back a groan. Broken, fractured, or bruised? Step right up ladies and gentlemen, spin the wheel and find out the damage to your ribs. Everyone’s a winner. 

Oh hell, he’d definitely hit his head again. 

From the corner of his eye he could see Mogor bending to pick up the injector and inspecting it for damage. Looked all in one piece, more’s the pity.

He put up a token struggle when Mogor pinned him. Pretty sure he got in a decent kick on his shin, though the Galra didn’t even wince, damn him. Soon enough though Mogor had him on his stomach, a knee on his back with one purple hand a manacle around his wrists, and the injector was at his neck.

Lance was still winded and the position put a painful strain on his ribs, but he still managed to croak out, “Why’s it always the neck? Haven’t you people ever heard of a shot to the arm?”

Mogor ignored him, pressing the injector more firmly. “Remember,” he said, completely unruffled, “You are a Galra soldier. You want to open the blue lion for us, and then form Voltron. You want Voltron to go to Lord Zarkon. You are Galra.”

With a hiss the injector pierced his skin. “You are Galra,” Mogor repeated, and Lance gave a muffled shout as the serum began to flood in. “You are Galra. You are Galra.” It burned like the forcefield, but worse he could feel it traveling into his mind, burning and then covering, like a thick layer of snow. It was hard to think, hard to even panic. He could hear Mogor saying the words again and again but it was like listening to a sledgehammer a mile away. Eventually, he couldn’t hear them at all.

 

It was a pretty insidious drug, Lance had to admit. Even after the first wave wore off, he could tell it was there. Mogor had eventually left without him noticing, and he came to with his face pressed against the floor. The words were a soft echo in the back of his head. Not one he believed. Not yet.

He wasn’t sure if it was the serum or just the aftereffects of being knocked around too much, but he was exhausted. He turned his head to look at his hand--double vision was gone, at least. Still pretty dizzy though.

With gritted teeth he pulled himself up into a sitting position, ignoring the scream of his ribs as best he could. Once up, he panted for a while and took stock of the situation. 

He’d trade Keith’s lion for a healing pod right now, but nothing to be done about that. He wasn’t actively bleeding so that was the best that could be expected. Killer headache, though. Lance wrapped one arm around his ribs for support and the other went to his temple, trying to rub away some of the pain.

What were the options? Sit here and go crazy. Sit here and hope the team made it to him before he went completely crazy. Sit here and try not to go crazy, somehow.

The headache spiked and he was breathless again. Mogor’s voice was all around, whispering, insistent, “You are Galra. You are Galra.”

It was sick, the way he could feel it altering his mind. He could see how this was going to go, warping or just stealing memories from him. Things felt hazy already, though he had a fairly firm grasp that he was not, in fact, a giant purple alien. But it was hard to remember. He was thinking about home, about his mom, Voltron and the team, like it was a story someone told him. Disassociation? Was that the first symptom?

You are Galra. You are Galra.

The ache in his side grew until the haze popped like a balloon. Off-kilter and surprised, Lance looked down to where his arm was clasped too tight around his side. The other hand was shaking against his hairline. 

He let out a harsh breath. A rescue sure would be nice right about now.

Okay, so pain helped control it maybe? Worth a shot anyway. At the very least he could Pavlov himself into associating ‘Galra’ with ‘bad’. But he was going to do some major damage to his ribs if he kept shifting them like that, so another option would be nice.

The forcefield shimmered helpfully from across the room. 

“Dammit,” Lance sighed, and set to work standing up.

The serum hit him again while he was laboriously making his way toward the blue entryway. The dizzyness made him stumble and he almost fell, before he slapped his side roughly. The burst of pain made his eyes water but his mind was his own again, more or less.

His legs were shaking by the time he made it to the shield, despite how small the cell was. He gratefully let himself slide down the wall just a couple inches away from the blue light, close enough to touch without having to move much. 

He was so tired. This was ridiculous, Shiro had tossed him around the training room worse than this, back when he was first learning hand-to-hand. It definitely wasn’t his first concussion. Wonder if it was the starfish or the Galra who got him? He bet that seaweed could pack a punch. Besides, Mogor didn’t seem like the type who could really sneak up on anyone. Must have been Richie Rich’s gang.

Even if this little plan worked, Zarkon was going to eat the starfish alive. Not the kind of guy who made concessions or trade deals. Richie Rich was a lot stupider than Lance had given him credit for. That meant he’d been tricked by someone very stupid, but he was trying not to think about that.

It was a shame. They really did need those force fields. They’d freed a pretty big number of planets and it was only a matter of time before the free zone got too big for Voltron to protect. The planets needed to at least have a minimal amount of protection, or they’d just be bombed into oblivion before Voltron could get there. They’d captured a production planet a bit ago, and Pidge was working with the native Arlurians to get the fighter jet factory up and running again. Offensive capabilities were looking up. 

But the Balmerans said crystal harvesting on a mass scale was out of the question, with their host still recovering, and that was the only Balmera they’d run across so far. So they needed forcefields with alternative power sources, and he’d really hoped the starfishes were the answer. Shiro had really hoped they were the answer, and Lance hated disappointing Shiro.

You are Galra.

“Oh hell,” he groaned, and shifted his arm just enough that his fingertips brushed against the shield. Immediately the blue energy arced out and screeched up his nerves, flinging his arm away. He clutched his hand to him and breathed carefully, waiting for the burning to subside. At least this time the rest of his body stayed put. Felt like dipping his hand in acid, though. This was going to be just loads of fun.

The whispers had subsided at least. If his head felt fuzzy, he was pretty sure that was just the exhaustion and head-wound combo. 

Still, they’d run across many of the witch’s creations before. It wasn’t going to be so simple to circumvent something she made. No doubt it was working quietly in the background, less strongly but still effectively. To be honest, defeating Zarkon would be a lot simpler without her around. Shiro didn’t like to talk about it, but Lance was pretty sure it was the witch who’d scared him the most during his imprisonment. Not the ten thousand year old warlord, not the people trying to kill him in an arena, but a little old lady with too much power.

Lance wondered if she’d ever done anything like this to him. There had been little hints over the past year that the witch had had plans for him, was trying to make him into more than just an arena fighter. 

Well, at least Mogor’s plan was just to kill them all, instead of corrupting them. Small blessings, he guessed. There was a certain amount of pride in being considered too much trouble to keep around. 

He closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall, wincing at the sore spot. The whispering was quiet for now, and he was in desperate need of a nap. He could feel himself dropping off almost as soon as he decided to allow it.

 

The blue lion was waiting for him there, in his dreams. It looked at him from its hangar in the palace as though confused. The blue shield between them glowed brightly. “Hey buddy,” he said, and his voice sounded strange even to him. “Gonna let me in?”

There were Galra soldiers all around them. You are Galra. He raised a purple hand to knock and the lion made a terrible, uncertain roar. “It’s me, your pilot. Let’s go. We have a lot of work to do.”

What work? There was...something. Another mission. He had to get to the others. If they could form Voltron everything would be alright. “You want to form Voltron too, right? So let me in.” He knocked. The forcefield wavered, then went down.

 

He started awake, breathing heavily. Mogor was in the room, watching him. He was getting real tired of that you-are-a-bug look. “Can’t you leave me to go crazy in peace?” Lance grumbled, trying to hide how shaken he was. 

Mogor only shook his head and nudged something on the floor closer to the pilot with his foot. A covered plate, looked like. “It appears you are still confused, soldier. Eat, so you can recover.”

Lance started at him for a moment and burst out laughing. “Seriously?!” He had to hold a hand around his ribs again but wow, that just took the cake. “I’m not that far gone yet, Mogor.” God, in all his time fighting the Galra he’d never expected to see one trying to roleplay, much less see a commander play nanny.

To his credit, Mogor kept up the act. “You will make a full recovery. I expect you to be back at work within a day.”

He had a sobering thought. Mogor didn’t seem like roleplay was something he would have thought up on his own. Which meant that was part of the test-runs with the serum. So eventually this was going to start to work, if he wasn’t careful. A day--24 hours at the outside. That was how much time Mogor was implying he had before the serum took full effect.

How long had it been already? Just a couple hours, and he was already having dreams. He’d looked at his own purple hand and thought nothing of it. 

Mogor watched him for a while longer, but Lance ignored him. No point in engaging him if that was just going to make things worse. The Galra left without another word--and hell, had the forcefield been down that whole time? He felt like crap but he had to start paying better attention. Not that he could have made it out with Mogor standing right there, but he hadn’t even noticed.

This sucked major Haverian orbs. He glared at the covered plate and wondered what the chances were that it was laced with more drugs. Pretty low, he hoped, because he was starving. He lifted the lid and grimaced. The whatever-it-was from Richie Rich’s feast stared gelatinously back at him. Some sort of...jellyfish, with big googly eyes.

He put the lid back down and thought of Hunk, who had a cast-iron stomach for everything except g-forces. If Hunk could do it, he could too. He picked the lid up and the eyes blinked at him, and he slammed the lid down again. 

“Nope,” he said, and pushed it away.

The headache hit him so hard he nearly passed out. You are Galra, you are Galra, YOU ARE GALRA. He tried to hold on to the memory of Hunk but it had warped, it was Hunk but it seemed wrong, seemed wrong there was a human in his memories instead of a fellow soldier. Lance touched the force field three times before the voices abated.

A couple hours later, Mogor came to collect the plate and chided him for not eating properly. To his horror, Lance felt guilty.


	3. Chapter 3

Twelve hours later, he lost the last memory of his mom’s arms around him. In her place was a stern barrack matron. He’d barely had the presence of mind to grieve. Driving off the voices with pain no longer worked, and he’d been reduced to curling up on the floor with his fingers knotted in his hair.

“Not much time now, soldier.”

“Shut up,” he gritted out, and a wave of remorse swept over him. But he knew that wasn’t right, knew he should be...fighting? Fighting what? This wasn’t where he was supposed to be, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember where else he needed to go.

There was a memory of an alien woman, tall and tan. They were in a Galra ship and she became Galra, body stretching and changing. It was an illusion--one of them was. The alien or the Galra. She was...Galra, he thought. That must be right. 

Eight hours after that, the voices switched from saying ‘you’ to ‘I’.

The headache was excruciating all the time now, the voices shouting almost constantly. He felt out of place in his own body--it wasn’t as large as it should have been, had too many small bones and not enough organs. Where was his second heart? Who stole it?

Mogor was in the room again, talking about missions. It was a struggle not to call him commander, it was impossible to remember why he shouldn’t, only that there was something important about it. 

He was so tired, but sleeping was bad. He remembered that distinctly. Sleep was bad, because...there was something precious that needed to be protected. He couldn’t protect it in his sleep. Couldn’t protect it awake, either.

Mogor was talking about a lion, and that stirred something in Lance.

Mogor saw him move and leaned forward. “Do you want to see the blue lion, soldier? Do you want to help Lord Zarkon?”

And there was another of those feelings, that he should say no, but to what part? He wanted to see the blue lion. That seemed just as important as saying no. He couldn’t protect it when it was so far away.

“Do you want to form Voltron?”

“Yes,” he said without thought, because the word Voltron sounded like home, like duty and responsibility. 

Mogor smiled then, and Lance felt both horrified and pleased, and had to close his eyes for a moment, confused. The forcefield went down, and two other soldiers came in with a stretcher. They strapped him onto it carefully. The heavy sound of their footsteps were like spikes in his aching head.

The took him through corridors and out into the moonlight. The cool air was a slap to the face and he came to, just a little, just enough to strain against the straps that dug into his wrists. The commander told him to stop and he did, feeling drained. 

He’d spent all day staring at a forcefield but the lion’s was different. It was a lovely, stable blue without any of the energy backlash of the starfish forcefields. That rang a bell, but he was too tired to pursue the thought. Frustration welled up and then slipped away like water. 

“Commander,” he said, then stopped. The night was quiet around them except for the bustle of the two soldiers as they unbuckled him from the stretcher. They helped him stand up, supporting him against the pain of his wrong-sized ribs.

“Soldier,” said the commander, said Mogor, “I want you to open the lion for us so that we can make repairs. Do it now.” 

Lance hesitated. He wanted to get to the lion but the thought made him sick. The headache spiked and he felt himself go limp against the other soldiers, head hanging low. He had to...what? It felt important. Protect. “Gotta protect it,” he mumbled, and that was it, that was right. Even if nothing else made sense, he couldn’t forget that.

Mogor moved in front of him, waited until Lance lifted his head. “I will protect it for you,” the Commander said, “The lion needs repairs. How can you protect it when it’s damaged? How can you form Voltron? Trust me.”

Some small bizarre part of him wanted to laugh, but it died quickly. The memory of Voltron was crystal-clear in his mind, the sheer power of it, the strength of the connection to the other pilots--who were...A flash of colors. A shock of white hair, a yellow shirt. No faces, no names. “Where are the others?”

“Others?”

“The pilots. I know there were...there are pilots.”

“They’re coming. You need to form Voltron with them.”

“They’re not Galra,” he said uncertainly. 

“No. But you need to form Voltron with them. Don’t you want to?”

He did. There was no part of him that didn’t want to form Voltron. Some small sense of danger, slipping away even as he tried to pin it down.

“Then you need to open the lion for me.” Mogor moved to the side, and the soldiers moved him forward.

He raised his hand and knocked, feeling something shout inside him before it got drowned out. I AM GALRA, I AM GALRA. The shield stayed strong. 

“Soldier, I told you to lower that shield.”

Lance shook his head, confused. “I can’t.” The lion hadn’t moved but he could tell it was looking at him, examining him. He was failing some sort of test. He knocked again but nothing changed. That was how he always did it, right? There were memories of that. He just...knocked, and the lion knew him. “I think he’s forgotten me.”

“Try again,” Mogor insisted, looking troubled for the first time Lance could remember. “Think about Voltron. Forming Voltron and...protecting.”

“Protecting what?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just think about Voltron and try again.” 

He cleared his thoughts. There was a distant sound like an explosion but he ignored it, looking at the blue lion and just wanting it, wanting to be part of it again. The soldiers beside him were shifting nervously but he ignored them too.

Voltron was something good, something perfect. It felt like a long time since he’d felt something good. He could remember sitting at the helm of the lion, connecting with the others (glasses, red jacket). How it felt to hear the lion, the subtle half-there sensation of a foreign mind. He wanted that. Wanted to be there, protecting...whatever it was that needed protecting.

Lance touched the forcefield and flinched reflexively, but it didn’t hurt him. “Hey buddy,” he said, not knowing where the words came from. “Let’s go home.”

The forcefield came down and Mogor rushed forward with a triumphant cry. Lance winced as the soldiers hustled him forward, straining his ribs. Something inside him was screaming, but I AM GALRA I AM GALRA.

The blue lion’s main hatch was open and they entered, even as more booming noises came from above. The soldier to Lance’s right passed the Commander a device, which he jammed into an empty port. The lion shuddered around them, red lines flickering through the consoles. 

Mogor breathed out an appreciative noise. “Good work, soldier. Let’s get you back inside.”

 

Back in the cell, he was debriefed on his next mission. “I wanted to give you more time to recover, but Lord Zarkon has asked you to complete one more task for him and time is of the essence. Can you do it?”

“Yes, Commander,” Lance said, because he was expected to say something and that seemed like the right thing to say, because something in him had gone very quiet and still. He couldn’t shake the feeling of failure. Maybe he could make up for it, with this new mission.

“The Altean rebels are overhead, trying to capture the blue lion. Our fighters are keeping them busy but they will be here soon, faster than I’d hoped. You don’t remember right now, but you fooled them into thinking you are a traitor to the Galra. They will bring you with them.”

Lance nodded. It seemed right, that they would do that. He remembered expecting a rescue, so it must be true. “Do I fight them?”

“No. Let them take you. Pretend that you are one of them. Let them see that you are injured, but insist that you are fine to pilot the blue lion. You need to form Voltron, because more Galra fleets are on their way. I will take care of everything else. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. I will see you after the battle. Good luck, soldier.”

And then Mogor was gone, the starfish forcefield back in place, and Lance settled back to wait.

 

Only ten minutes or so had passed before a yellow lion burst through the wall, and the forcefield flickered out.. An external speaker blared to life as he blinked away the concrete dust. “Lance! I came to get you. You doing all right?”

He coughed, then remembered his orders and shouted up, “Just got knocked around a little! Get me to my lion, we’ve gotta hurry.”

It was easier than he’d thought it would be, pretending to be one of them. The yellow lion opened up and a familiar person walked out. Disgust and joy warred within him, and he had to close his eyes for a second. 

“Hey, man, you don’t look so great.”

“Just a concussion and a bad rib,” he shrugged, but the movement felt unnatural, too exaggerated. Hunk--that was his name, he remembered now, like a gift--was looking at him with concern, hands on Lance’s shoulders. That felt right. I AM GALRA. “Look, we don’t have time. I heard them talking, there are more fleets on the way. I heard them talking. We need to form Voltron.”

Hunk was gave him a doubtful look. “You sure? You look kinda like Coran’s cooking right now.”

Who was Coran? Not important. “No choice, right?”

He looked like he was going to argue, but then got distracted, touching a hand to the side of his helmet. “Yeah, I got him,” Hunk said. “Just gotta find his bayard and we’ll be on our way out. Princess, do you have a reading on it?” He listened. “Oh, nice.”

He jogged from the room and returned in just a few seconds, lugging Lance’s suit with him. He tossed it carelessly into the yellow lion’s mouth, then came back to help Lance stand up. “All right, let’s get you to your lion and get out of here.”

Lance hobbled his way into the yellow lion with Hunk’s assistance. Leaving sounded good. But no, he remembered, they had to form Voltron. The Commander wanted him to, that was his mission. “What about the fleet?”

“Well, if we get out of here fast enough we won’t have to face them. The others are picking off the stragglers right now. Allura’s listening,” Hunk tapped his helmet again, “And she doesn’t have anything on short range sensors. We should have plenty of time to get in the castle and wormhole away. Then we can stick you in a healing pod until you stop acting so weird.”

“I’d trade Keith’s lion for a healing pod right now,” Lance said absently, not really understanding why he was saying it. Weird? He wasn’t acting weird. 

Hunk laughed, then abruptly grimaced and began speaking to the air again. “Yeah, he definitely has a concussion or something, Keith, give him a break.. His face keeps doing this thing where it looks like he hates me. No offence,” he said, turning back to Lance as the yellow lion started backing out of the destroyed cell. “I know you don’t hate me.”

“Okay,” he said, not really sure how to respond. Hate him? He was a rebel, of course Lance hated him. Except he didn’t, not really, and that was unsettling to realize. It was like he kept...relaxing, then tensing, like his body couldn’t agree with his mind. His head was splitting apart but he needed to remember, something important was just out of reach.

They were out in the open air again, and there was the blue lion ahead of them, hatch open and waiting. He didn’t hate him at all, none of them, and the lion was waiting for him but he couldn’t go in. Couldn’t form Voltron, had to form Voltron. He remembered knocking on the forcefield with a purple hand. He remembered tan hands straining at straps, and he looked down at his own hands.

“Hunk,” he said quietly, “I think something’s wrong.”

Hunk glanced at him, then back at the lion. “Shiro, I don’t like this. Lance is acting really, really strange and the blue lion doesn’t have its shield up. Yeah. Yeah, it’s just...sitting there, wide open. Okay. Got it.”

 

Lance started as the yellow lion peeled away toward the sky, pulled out of his thoughts. “Wait, go back. I have to get my lion.” Couldn’t leave it behind, he had to...do something. 

“Just chill, Pidge and Keith are going to pick it up. Shiro’s clearing a path back to the castle. You’re not okay to pilot right now anyway.”

“I’m okay--”

“Friends don’t let friends drive giant robots concussed. Allura’s picked up a few ships coming in, but it’s no fleet. We’re fine to just leave. Relax, everything’s fine.”

Everything was not fine. There were voices in his ears, telling him he needed to be doing something. His hands were twitching and he couldn’t seem to stop them. They were the wrong color, the wrong size. Commander Mogol said--but Hunk was right there, and he couldn’t remember, couldn’t remember anything, but everything felt wrong. 

“Go back,” he insisted, trying to stand up. “We need to form Voltron.”

“No, man, I’m taking you to the castle. Sit down, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“No!” Lance shouted, the voices shouted, it was all the same. He lunged and caught the rebel on the nose with a punch, toppling him from the pilot’s seat. Grabbing the controls he swung the lion back around toward the planet, sweating from the pain in his ribs, in his head. The mission was a failure, but he could still..could still…

He faltered, confused, and was wide open when Hunk got up from the floor and threw a punch of his own, felt it connect to his eye before he hit the floor and the excruciating jolt of his ribs set fireworks off in his head. 

Hunk was tying his hands and feet with something, but Lance was done. No energy left, he’d failed and that was it. Or, hadn’t failed? It was too hard to think about. There were voices but he ignored them, just...muted them, somehow. They weren’t doing any good anyway, it really didn’t matter what he was anymore. Mogor could be pissed if he wanted to, there was nothing more Lance could do.

Something was tapping the side of his face, so he opened his eyes. Hunk was looking worriedly at him. “You with me? Didn’t think I’d hit you that hard.”

Hunk’s nose was bleeding a little. Lance peered up at him from from behind a swelling eye. “Sorry,” he said, and found that it was true, which was nice. “I’m...confused.”

“S’cool, I got you. ”

“What’s happening?” 

“Lion’s taking us to the castle, the others are right behind us. You look bad and you’re kinda crazy right now, so we’re just going to dump you straight in a healing pod. That good by you?”

“Okay.” Things felt clearer, now. Less like there were two of him, though he could tell the voices were still there. It was a struggle to keep them muted. He blinked and there were fluttering black wings along the edges. Some part of him insisted he stay awake, insisted sleep was bad, but he muted that too, stuffed it all into a little box in his mind until he felt almost empty. 

“I think I’m...gonna sleep, now.”

“Go ahead, see you in a couple days.”

 

-

 

When they pulled him out of the pod a week later, things felt...well, a hell of a lot better. The team was there waiting for him; it’s always nice to feel loved. Bit of a downer though when he realized Keith had his bayard with him and Shiro was watching him like a hawk as he stepped out onto the platform. 

Hunk was offended too, complaining, “I don’t know why they’re like this, Pidge has hit me harder than that.” 

Pidge eyed Hunk as though trying to figure out if that was a slight, and socked him in the arm. Then she spun around and grasped him in a tight hug--and hey, broken ribs were all healed, very nice. “Glad you’re better,” she said fiercely. “We were worried.”

When he showed no signs of, what, breaking her neck? Cackling and turning purple? The others started to relax. Shiro clapped him on the shoulder, and doesn’t that just give a guy warm fuzzies. “Very worried. Do you remember what happened?”

“Uh, kinda?”

So they all went to the dining table and compared notes while Lance filled his week-empty stomach with goop. Turns out he’d woken up and tried to kill Coran when he’d been setting him up in the pod, whoops. No wonder they were a bit on edge.

Lance filled them in on what exactly the serum was supposed to do, though he started skipping over details when Allura gasped and covered her mouth. They didn’t need to know what it felt like, forgetting his own mother. There was a lot of lost time from that day anyway, and he wasn’t really in a hurry to remember it all. 

After he was done with as much as he could recall, Kieth leaned back in his chair. “Well, that explains our big question,” he commented. At Lance’s look, he continued, “We couldn’t figure out why you weren’t more crazy.”

“Oh, nice,” Lance complained.

“No, I mean, we took a good look at the serum. Bad stuff. Hunk says you were already coming out of it on your own though. I bet when you kept touching the forcefield you weakened it. Fighting conditioning with conditioning? Dumb plan, but it worked.”

“It worked, so it wasn’t a dumb plan, jerk.” He shoveled more food into his mouth. “Anyway, what happened on your guys’ end?”

Allura smiled, “Well, you didn’t fail your mission after all.”

There was a sick moment of confusion, because he distinctly recalled thinking ‘mission failed’ there at the end, but she couldn’t be talking about that. He surreptitiously pinched his leg hard under the table, but nothing changed. 

“Your diplomatic mission?” She said, when he didn’t respond. “With the Va’alaskhaians?”

“Ohh,” he said, relieved and struggling not to show it. “The starfishes. What happened with Richie Rich, anyway?”

“Their leader--”

“Don’t pretend you can pronounce his name, it’s impossible.”

Allura sighed and the others laughed. “Richie Rich, then. The second the Galra fleet retreated, he was deposed. We didn’t ask what happened to him. His daughter took over--seems she was quite taken with you.”

“Oh good, that was a daughter.”

Kieth snorted, and Lance flung a spoonful of goop at him on principle. Missed though, so Kieth just sneered at him.

“The daughter informs us that no one knew quite what her father was up to, and everyone was very...unhappy, when the Galra showed up. They took us by surprise, too, and I’m ashamed to say almost got the better of us. Our shields were down-- Richie Rich said he wanted to transport a gift to us. We assumed it was a good-faith gesture.” She leaned toward him to clasp his hand sincerely. “I’m sorry, Lance, that we had to leave you behind.” 

He waved it off, a little uncomfortable. “It’s fine, you came back.”

Allura leaned back again and nodded. “Yes, and we had the help of the Vashil--Va’alsh--”

“The starfishes,” called Coran helpfully from the kitchen, and she sighed.

“Wait, how? The starfish don’t have any fighting force, just the shields.”

“Oh, oh, let me show him!” Pidge interrupted. “It was pretty smart, actually.” She help up her hand parallel to the table and made a zooming noise, flying it around. She flew it towards Hunk’s face and he quickly held up a hand with his own ‘zworp’ sound effect. She crashed against him and flopped her hand on the table with an exaggerated explosion noise. 

“Using forcefields as a trap,” Shiro clarified. “It’ll be pretty useful until we can get the fighter jet factories up and running.”

“So they gave up some shielding devices?”

“More than that, the daughter offered up schematics. They’re surprisingly easy to construct, so there are a number of freed planets that can start churning them out.”

“You didn’t like, offer my hand in marriage in exchange for that or anything, right?”

Allura smiled coyly. “We said we’d work out the details later.”

So he threw a spoon of goop at her too, only this time it hit, and things devolved from there.

 

And all’s well that ends well, right? Except that night, he woke up convinced he was in a barracks, and fell out of bed when his legs weren’t as long as he remembered.


End file.
